Friday, October 26, 2012

To commemorate Porktober, here are some ribs that Trevor and I made a while back. We used Melissa Cookston's recipe for barbecuing loin back ribs (aka "baby back" but there are technical differences).

Who is Melissa Cookston? Seriously?

Gee....she only won Memphis in May World Championships twice in the past three years and is the co-owner of the highly acclaimed Memphis Barbecue Company in Horn Lake, MS. Some people say she is one of the best female pitmasters out there. They are wrong. She is one of the best pitmasters out there.

You
might have caught Melissa recently on Food Network's Diners, Drive
Ins, and Dives when they visited Memphis Barbecue Company for their
world championship barbecue (Surf'n'Turf Jackpot episode.)
I DVR'd it because

I'm a BBQ geek

and so I can do an at home version of
her awesome sounding, drool inducing cheese fritters. If you saw the
episode, you know what I mean.

Two hours into the cook on the Big Green Egg, smoked with cherry and hickory.

Trevor demonstrating the "bend test", my favorite part of the day.

Ribs. I like ribs. Did I mention that? Ribs, ribs, ribs.

Fancy plating...errrr...I mean, PAPER plating.

I followed the recipe as written which has some steps that I normally don't do.

Her recipe has you put the mustard slather on AFTER the dry rub. Most I see have you do it BEFORE and I usually don't bother with the mustard slather at all.

Cookston's recipe has you let the ribs sit with the rub on them overnight. I don't usually.

She cooks the ribs at two different temps in stages.

Despite all the departures from my normal techniques, these ribs tasted great. I found that I really liked the base rub recipe and I've used it several times since then. I think this just re-iterates that there is not just one way to make good BBQ.

So it's not too late to enjoy Porktober! To get your creative juices flowing, check out Pork Be Inspired` for some delicious recipes featuring all things pork.

11 comments:

Boy, you just squeaked in to the month of Porktober, eh what? I love ribs, and I love them roasted in my oven in the absence of your truly's owning a grill of any kind. Don't worry, nothing about that will change the world in any way.